Lost Child of the Dawn Read online

  This zone was located about forty minutes on horseback from Akiba. It was a zone designed for parties, and the monsters that appeared there had levels in the 80s. Akatsuki was level 91, and she wouldn’t gain any experience points here, but in exchange, she could move in relative safety. On the other hand, although it was possible to defeat the monsters that appeared here safely, it took more than one attack to do so, which made it the perfect place for testing weapons and practicing. Akatsuki often came here for combat training.

  The group she’d come here for was probably training right now, too.

  After she’d pushed her way through the brush for a while, she heard the sounds of battle: clashing steel and a raucous noise that seemed to freeze the air; the sharp sound of electrical attacks… Apparently, the Knights of the Black Sword were going over their teamwork and equipment again today.

  Akatsuki found a depression in the ground, then quietly sat down. From that cluster of trees, she could look down into the sunken clearing.

  There, two parties from the Knights of the Black Sword were in the middle of a fierce mock battle. Akatsuki used her special Tracker skills to erase all traces of her presence, then began to watch their combat training.

  Around the time of the Libra Festival, the word Mystery had begun to be whispered through the town of Akiba.

  When it first appeared, it was a rumor a bit like an urban legend.

  In Elder Tales, Adventurers’ various actions were expressed as special skills. Special skills were granted to Adventurers according to all sorts of conditions, but the most common was through their classes. For example, Assassinate, the high-powered offensive special skill Akatsuki used, was one that could be acquired by Assassins once they reached a certain level. As Adventurers leveled up, these special skills were replaced by higher-level special skills. For example, Assassinate III, which was acquired at level 47, was weaker than Assassinate IV, which was acquired at level 57.

  However, even with Assassinate IV, it was normal for its power to differ depending on who used it. The reason lay within the special-skill ranks. A special skill that had just been acquired as a result of leveling up belonged to a rank known as “Initiate.” It could be used, but it wasn’t very powerful. After that, by paying into proficiency or using specific items, it was possible to raise the power of the same special skill to “Elementary,” “Intermediate,” “Esoteric” and “Secret.” To attain “Intermediate,” you needed a scroll made by someone in the same class; attaining “Esoteric” required a scroll made with rare materials. Both were expensive, but could be purchased.

  However, it was impossible to attain “Secret” without conquering a dedicated quest. In addition, that dedicated quest required participation in a raid. This difficulty in acquiring special skills was one of the reasons behind the difference in combat strength between super-top-class Adventurers affiliated with raid guilds and second-class Adventurers like Akatsuki.

  According to the rumors, “Mystery” was what lay beyond “Secret.”

  It was a special skill rank that hadn’t existed when Elder Tales had been a game, at least not before the Catastrophe. For that reason, some also called it Overskill.

  Increased power in special skills due to a rise in rank manifested on several fronts.

  Although this differed by special skill, Assassinate was an offensive special skill, so the damage inflicted simply increased. From what Akatsuki remembered, there was a power increase of about 22 percent between “Initiate” and “Secret.” There was no knowing how much of a power increase to expect when you attained “Mystery.”

  As described, “Mystery” brought nothing but good things. However, its existence was no more than a rumor because the number of Adventurers who could declare categorically that they’d confirmed it was incredibly small. As far as Akiba’s rumor mill went, half the people didn’t believe in Mysteries or Overskills and half did, while even most of the Adventurers who believed in it thought it wasn’t all that powerful. Akatsuki believed in the existence of Mysteries simply because Shiroe had declared they existed.

  If I manage to acquire a Mystery, even I’ll be more…

  As she thought, Akatsuki hugged herself tightly.

  Most of Akatsuki’s own special skills were ranked “Intermediate” or “Esoteric.” Of course, for a party-level Adventurer, these ranks were more than sufficient, but she’d be no match for a member of a major combat guild. Even here, there was a wall in front of Akatsuki.

  However, the Mysteries must exist.

  Shiroe had said they existed, so they did.

  And the ones who were most likely to have attained them were the strongest of the combat guilds, the members of the Knights of the Black Sword. Of course, there were probably Adventurers in guilds like Honesty and D.D.D. who’d attained “Mystery” rank as well, but the Knights of the Black Sword prided themselves on being elite, and it was more likely to exist among them.

  No one knew how “Mystery” rank was attained, but in light of the fact that “Secret” was granted through special quests that required raid participation, it was logical that it probably involved some sort of quest. That just showed how little general knowledge there was about the way “Mystery” level was attained. In the current Elder Tales, where strategy sites no longer existed, information traveled slowly, and its value was through the roof.

  This was why Akatsuki was huddled up in the brush in the bone-chilling December cold, watching the Knights of the Black Sword train. If another Assassin was using a “Mystery”-level attack, she wanted to see that skill and gauge how powerful it was. If they were going on a quest, she wanted to at least know its trigger.

  They’re tough… That was just one attack.

  Even from here, she could tell the Knights of the Black Sword were strong: naturally, the Assassins who fought there, but even the other classes as well. They were so strong it was fascinating.

  Heeey, cut in deeper.

  Lame. That ain’t enough damage, is it?

  You’ve gotta step farther in!

  The way they spoke might have been rough, but all the members of the Knights of the Black Sword were elites, in the top 1 percent on the Yamato server.

  Their movements, their teamwork, the beauty of their equipment, their strength.

  Just watching them made Akatsuki want to cry.

  Even though fighting was all she could do…

  She was weak in combat.

  She remembered the profiles of her liege and her junior guild member on the night of the festival, illuminated by the bonfires. A pair of birds soaring to heights Akatsuki didn’t understand.

  She’d wanted to be by Shiroe’s side. She’d wanted it very badly.

  But she hadn’t even tried to think about what Shiroe was seeing, and now she was paying the price.

  I want to get stronger…

  Once more, Akatsuki murmured it to herself.

  However, she was keenly aware that that murmur alone would never make her stronger. She knew how foolish it was to be sitting here observing the Knights of the Black Sword. She didn’t have the strength to accomplish one single thing.

  Akatsuki, who had to protect Shiroe’s secret, was the loneliest person in wintry Akiba.

  3

  The glass bottle was big, so big it might have been better to call it a glass basin. Pale pink liquid circulated inside the glass vessel, and a man on a stepladder was casually tossing light brown leaves into it.

  The fragrance that wafted up smelled like cocoa, but Roderick, who was frowning, knew it wouldn’t taste the least bit sweet if you drank it.

  This was a research facility known as “Roderick’s Workshop.”

  It was a room in the Roderick Trading Company’s guild tower.

  “Guild tower” was one of the terms Adventurers used for guild halls. The term was often used when a guild bought up an entire building, as the Roderick Trading Company had, and used its interior as a guild hall. This was particularly true if the building wa
s a tall one.

  The Roderick Trading Company, one of Akiba’s leading production guilds, had purchased a seven-story building on the north side of Akiba that it used as its guild hall. Inside, the laboratory that Roderick claimed as his own was overflowing with glass lab instruments.

  There were small items for experiments, but the room also held enormous heating vessels like the one that was currently in use, and a pestle the size of a bathtub.

  In order to create items in Elder Tales, all you needed to do was select the thing you wanted to make from a menu. If you had the materials and the machinery, it would be done in ten seconds. Even now, in this world, that method could be used the way it had in the game. However, if you wanted to create something new, as Roderick did, it was another story. You had to do everything by hand, right from the start.

  If you wanted to produce in volume, you needed large equipment.

  On the day the Round Table Council was established, Shiroe had pointed out the possibilities that lay within the new item-creation system.

  These possibilities had first taken root in the field of food and drink, and had then spread to the disciplines of furniture making, smithy, and haberdashery. For the past six months, the artisans of Akiba had continued to discover and develop new items on a daily basis.

  However, there were some artisans who were unable to apply manual skills from the real world. Roderick was one of them. His subclass was Apothecary. This was a production class that created the potions and balms that were staples of fantasy games.

  Since there had been no “potions to recover 180 HP” in the real world where he’d once lived, there could be no techniques to use as models. Alchemists, Sigilmancers, Gem Engineers and other fantasy world–type production classes all had similar issues.

  That didn’t mean they couldn’t create new items, however.

  If they were unable to divert recipes and techniques from the real world, all they had to do was inspect the recipes that were already in this world, run experiments, and invent. Over the past six months, they’d created reinforcement-type recovery potions up to level 50, and sigils and gems had been continually improved.

  One of Roderick’s great personal achievements had been the development of a mass-produced Appearance Reset Potion. Unlike the real Appearance Reset Potion, it was simple: It only allowed changes to up to two parameters from the gender, height, weight, figure, hair color, eye color, and skin color options. However, thanks to the popularization of this potion, they’d nearly managed to eradicate cases of Adventurers struggling with genders that were different from their old-world selves.

  After that, Roderick had continued to analyze, mass-produce, and work out countermeasures for extremely difficult medicines such as Ambrosia, Theriac, and Netherworld Repast.

  The Roderick Trading Company was counted as one of the three major production guilds, but its purpose wasn’t quite production itself.

  When Elder Tales had been a game, item creation had taken the form of selecting recipes from a menu. There were different recipes for different subclasses, and in order to become able to create a variety of items, artisans had had to collect countless Recipe Scrolls.

  For example, even when speaking only of the types of medicines Apothecaries could create, there were instant HP recovery potions, gradual HP recovery potions, HP reinforcement potions, reinforcement potions for abilities, three types of poison antidote, antivenom potions, more than ten poisons for lacing weapons, movement speed increase potions, attack-speed increase potions…and so on. Because potions with stronger effects appeared every ten levels or so, even in the game, Roderick had been able to make over six hundred types of items. In other words, he’d had that many recipes.

  That said, it was difficult for ordinary Adventurers, let alone beginners, to collect the vast number of recipes in their entirety. Even among Apothecaries, it took a lot of time and in-game assets to become able to make absolutely anything medicinal.

  In an endeavor to counter that game situation, the Roderick Trading Company guild had been established with the goal of building a recipe library. If materials of corresponding rarity were used, it was possible to copy the recipes. In addition, artisans who worked at a guild that accumulated recipes naturally acquired many of them, and so were able to add more value to the cause overall than other crafters.

  It was only natural that, following the Catastrophe, the Roderick Trading Company had been the production guild that shifted its focus to research and development.

  At this point, most Adventurers who liked research and development had gravitated to the Roderick Trading Company.

  In the same way, Adventurers working to apply technology from the old world to this one, to mechanize and mass-produce, were joining the Marine Organization, and Adventurers who liked selling the resulting items and doing business with the People of the Earth were affiliated with Shopping District 8. The Marine Organization ran its own guild shop, even so, but the Roderick Trading Company left its sales work to Shopping District 8 and several commercial guilds. All of its guild members were people who liked mulling over new experiments when they had time.

  As a result, the Roderick Trading Company’s guild tower was buried in pointlessly complicated lab equipment and bundles of record documents, and its atmosphere was disorderly. Many fans of MMO games were in high school or college. They’d been students to begin with, and the atmosphere of this research institution-esque guild was probably comfortable for them.

  Internally, they often called the Roderick Trading Company the Roderick Laboratory, or the RoderLab for short. To them, it must have felt like an academy with a free and easy atmosphere, where they could immerse themselves in fun research every day.

  Including things such as the popularity vote for the lunch delivery girls from Onigiri Shop Enmusubi, it was turning into a guild that was well suited to this other world in a different way from comfy, homey guilds like the Crescent Moon League.

  In the heart of that guild hall, an enormous room with a high ceiling, Roderick turned around.

  The voice that had spoken to him belonged to a young member of his guild. The companion, who was still young enough to be called a boy, went away, leaving a visitor behind. Roderick climbed down from the low stepladder and greeted his guest.

  “Good afternoon, Nyanta.”

  “It’s night already.”

  Roderick paused at that. …Hmm. He’d been sure it was still before lunch…

  “Even if mew skip lunch, night comes.”

  His question received an entirely natural response. Nyanta had been looking around as if he was deeply interested, but with a twitch of his whiskers, he took a letter from his pouch in a smart gesture and handed it to Roderick.

  On taking it and skimming through, Roderick was left nonplussed.

  The sender of the letter was Shiroe of Log Horizon. He’d known that from the beginning. The content was a request for research related to technology development, and he’d anticipated that as well. Such paper-based exchanges were occurring more frequently these days.

  After all, this other world held all sorts of plant, animal, and mineral materials. Compounding them, verifying their effects, and searching for new items was incredibly entertaining. It was possible to look at the materials consumed in recipes from Elder Tales’ game days and get a vague idea of the medicinal properties of the required materials. Collecting and analyzing this sort of knowledge and putting together ideas thrilled him.

  The Roderick Trading Company attracted these so-called “research fiends.” Although most of the members specialized in different fields, it was safe to say that, on some level, they all had that sort of temperament.

  Roderick himself was aware that he had so much fun with this sort of trial and error that he tended to leave his Round Table Council duties to other guilds. The biggest victim of this was Shiroe. As a result, it was hard for him to turn down Shiroe’s requests.

  In addition, in most cases, Shiroe’s letters turne
d out to be beneficial for the Roderick Trading Company as well: suggestions from Shiroe for new products, or introductions to promising guilds or people. At the very least, so far, they’d never been worse off for considering them.

  However, this letter wasn’t as easy to understand.

  In any case, it held only a few lines.

  “That’s what it is, apparently.”

  “Nyanta, are you familiar with the contents of this letter?”

  “No, not in the least.”

  Nyanta waved a hand at the dumbfounded Roderick. Apparently he really didn’t know.

  I want a catalog of all the magic items that are currently in circulation in Akiba, or are most likely in the possession of the large guilds. I’d also like you to investigate their abilities. In particular, could you append the flavor text to your survey material?

  “Mmm, well… I don’t have any objection to it. However, investigating this is going to take quite a lot of items that are higher than fantasy-class and secret-class. That’s a lot of material. I expect that’s why he came to us, but…”

  “We don’t have assets like that at Log Horizon, mew see.”

  “So you say, but I’d wager you do have quite a variety of things.”

  “Mya-ha-ha-ha. We’ve got lots of growing youngsters, and it’s a drain on the wallet.”

  Nyanta laughed gently, showing a laid-back maturity. As always, he was neat and fashionable, a perfect gentleman.

  Roderick sighed and let himself be convinced.

  If Shiroe had sent him a letter like this, this sort of research would probably be necessary sooner or later. True, it was research which was likely to require a budget, but it wasn’t an amount they couldn’t scrape together.

  It was true that the Roderick Trading Company was probably the best guild for a job that required investigating many types of items. After all, it had the largest recipe collection on the Yamato server, and it attracted obsessives who loved research more than anything else in the world.

  “There are several things I’d like to discuss. Would you join me for lunch?”